The Body’s Instinct is to Bloom by Sandy Longhorn

So, this is what it means
to conquer the fire of fever,
to go days, weeks,
& now months
without a sizzle
behind the tongue,
beneath the skin,
drizzles of sweat no longer making rivulets
along the throat’s curve.

The body tamed is health.

I must forgive the whitecoats
for how they forced
my hands to loose their hold
on the pyrite & the flint.

I had grown so used to trafficking in ash.

The whitecoats saved the root of me,
enough healthy flesh
kept hidden
from the flames
to offer this rebirth,
though I often fought their tugs,
their scrapes,
their marriage
of brutal antiseptics
to this fiery pit.

Compliant now
under their smooth-fingered grazing,
I allow them to lift,
pinch, & shift newly muscled limbs,

to persuade the new growth
forming on the budding branches.

Sandy Longhorn is the author of The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths and Blood Almanac. She teaches at Pulaski Technical College, where she directs the Big Rock Reading Series, and for the low-residency MFA program at the University of Arkansas Monticello. In addition, she co-edits the online journal, Heron Tree.